hey guys and gals, just read the similar post on the topic, anywho got my new geet 2day with EMG 85/81 and the lil line 6 aint likin it. i remeber about 6 months ago my buddy had the same problem with my amp and had no probelm with emg hz's so its gotta be an active thing. my thoughts are that this is an old amp, clean dirty metal and insane are just really quiet no gain what so ever, even with insande and every thing at 4'o clock it dosent even sound overdriven, kinda bumed out, looked over my cables & guitar connection there all peachy, my old jackson with stock 90's active pickups sounds great lol go figure. thanks for your time

No personal experience, but from other people's posts here, it seems the active EMGs are putting out too high a voltage(?) for the input circuit of the Spider amps. Solution that seems to work for people is to use a stompbox (any kind, but should not have 100% bypass) between guitar and amp to temper the signal.

I had a spider 75 and I gave it to a friend as a traded for another guitar after I purchased a pod hd 500. I had actives in my guitar and they played great and tuned very accurately through the 75. And now my friend has that amp and is having tuning problems luckily playability Isnt affected tho. The key difference between our setup is he has an emg setup and I have blackouts. Out of every thread I've read here, emg seem to have a consistent problem with the spider series. However blackouts don't reflect the same issue. But the only fix I've came across was mentioned earlier and that's use a pedal that doesn't offer true bypass. Having used my 75 for a few years, I would recommend a noise suppressor and turn off the one built into the amp that way you can at least utilize the pedal in your signal chain effectively instead of having to lug around another piece of equipment just so you can play hassle free.

The information above may not be current, and you should direct questions to the current forum or review the manual.